ABSTRACT
Music is being played or listened to almost everywhere and most of the time in Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Ranging from the sound of a single flute played by a lonely shepherd in a high mountain valley, to privately performed curing ceremonies witnessed only by the curers and the ill, to radios playing in thousands of homes, to massive celebrations mobilizing hundreds of thousands of participants packed into the broad avenues and civic squares of densely populated cities, the richness and diversity of the musical traditions seem almost to defy description.
